






TV r. .lOHNSO'J. V 



ADDRESS 



UEFORE THE 



\.i.NliiybluljliLlljlil\LM]yrjli, 

At I'tica, Friday, Seiit^iiiber 18. ls«:{. 

BY REV. S. W. FISHER, D. D, 

PRESIDENT HAMILTON COLLEGE. 



ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



ij.smiMimiiiiiEff 



V 



BY REV. S. W. FISHER, D. D. 

PRESIDENT HAMILTON COLLEGE, 



At Utica, Friday, September 18, 1863. 





ALBANY: 

VAN BENTHUYSEN, PRINTER, 407 BROADWAY. 

1863. 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The scene before us is not only full of animation, 
but of interest to every one who has the happiness 
and progress of his race at heart. This great 
State — an empire in itself — is largely represented 
in its mechanical, and especially its agricultural 
interests. It is not merely an annual festival; it 
is a great school, where the results accomplished 
by the ablest and most practical minds in these 
departments are exhibited for instruction. You 
have assembled here from the farm, the shop, the 
counting-room? and the office ; from the valleys of 
the Susquehanna, the St. Lawrence and the Hudson 
and the shores of our beautiful lakes, to learn the 
progress which, as a State, we are making in those 
arts which are most essential to our support, our 
comfort and our civilization. The ancients had 
their Goddess of Agriculture. They reared altars 
and offered sacrifices and fruits to her in worship. 
They celebrated her festivals with music, feast- 



ing, and often wild orgies. But they knew nothing 
of such a scene as this. Neither the Agora, at 
Athens, nor the Campus Martins, at Rome, in 
spite of all their boasted civilization, was ever 
illustrated by an exhibition such as on this spot 
now meets your eyes, and quickens the pulse of 
every true patriot. Most devoutly do we recognize 
the divine sovereignty that establishes natural 
laws, and orders propitious seasons. The farmer, 
above most men, is impressed with a sense of his 
dependence upon divine power, and in the pure 
light of Chistianity is ready to acknowledge it. 
A thousand circumstances teach him this truth ; 
his daily life is full of those uncertainties which 
human power cannot determine. But, to-day, we 
recognize also another element of vast importance 
in our elevation — we recognize the manhood, the 
intelligence, the capacity for progress of the people. 
You see in this varied exhibition, mind entering 
into natural laws, and skill combining them to 
effect these rich products. For all that man can 
do, all that the highest intelligence can do, is to 
avail itself of the power God puts in our hands and 
use it most skillfully. The lightning is God's power ; 
but man, by his intelligence, guides it harmlessly 
to the ground, or makes it his post-horse to flash 



his thoughts round the world. This you see 
illustrated in a hundred forms to-day. I have 
listened to orators whose words have thrilled and 
moved multitudes ; I have stood in vast libraries 
and studied the thoughts which the greatest minds 
have given to the world, but nowhere have I been 
more deeply impressed with the power of the 
human mind for intelligent effort than when 
moving amidst this exhibition of the products of 
our farmers and mechanics. 

I have said that this exhibition was a school — a 
school for mutual instruction, where the most 
successful of the farmers and mechanics come to 
teach us by their solid, visible works, how much 
intelligence and skill, guiding the hand of labor, 
can effect in advancing these great interests. To 
see is to believe ; to know what has been done 
leads to the inquiry hoio it can be done again, and 
this is father to the purpose, to do it yourself. No 
man, with his eyes open, enters this exhibition 
without getting either some new impulse towards 
producing what is excellent, or new ideas as to 
the way in which it may be done. Especially is 
this true of those whose interests and success lie 
in this direction. The farmer asks himself why he 
may not have as rich fruit and as fine vegetables ; 



6 

why his lands may not produce as large a crop of 
grain ; why he cannot rear as good stock as any 
other man. These agricultural implements, which 
are working so great a revolution in fanning, he 
examines to see what improvements have been 
made, and how he can best avail himself of them. 
The mechanic gets new ideas of excellence in 
workmanship, or has his ambition kindled to equal 
or surpass what he here sees. Among the old 
Romans there was a certain freedman whose crops 
so far surpassed those of his neighbors that they 
accused him of witchcraft and brought him to 
trial for it. When he appeared in the forum, he 
produced a stout daughter and some excellent 
implements, — as iron spades and shears, — and 
presenting these together with his oxen to the 
Senate, said, " These, Romans, are my charms." 
Thanks to the light of a Christian civilization, we 
have advanced beyond the superstition which 
would hang a man for raising better crops than 
his neighbors. We go at once to the reason of 
things. How did he do it ? What instruments 
did he use ? What means did he employ ? and 
may I not use the same means and secure as good 
results ? And it is in this respect — in quickening 
men to ask this question and then in giving them 



a satisfactory answer, that this State and these 
county societies, with our papers devoted to 
agriculture, are effecting a most admirable work 
for the people all through the State. 

Now, gentlemen, the thought which rises upper- 
most as we survey this exhibition, the thought 
which forces itself upon my mind as I witness the 
success which has attended the efforts of these 
producers, is this, that precisely the same principle 
prevails here as in all other departments of human 
labor, the principle that intelligence, other things 
being equal, makes the superior farmer and me- 
chanic. I do not mean that a mere classical 
scholar, or a profound lawyer, or a poet, or a line 
writer, will necessarily be a good farmer. The 
field of knowledge is infinite, the objects to which 
it may be applied are various as the pursuits of 
man, and it is utterly impossible that any man 
should compass the whole or be eminent in all. 
Hence we must have a division of labor and of 
thought. One man takes this department and 
another that. Your department is that which 
embraces the production of fruits,' !^grains and 
animals necessary for the support and comfort of 
society. And what I mean to say is, that intelli- 
gence here makes the superior producer; that, 



8 

with the same diligence and labor, a thorough 
mastery of all the knowledge belonging to your 
business will give the greatest success. 

I do not belong to that school which thinks that 
ignorance is good enough for the masses of the 
people ; that because a man must labor with his 
hands his intellect is a useless appendage. The 
first man God made, the highest, most intelligent 
of the race, was a farmer. He made it his business 
to apply his intelligence to the tilling of the soil 
and the cultivation of its fruit. He, who could 
go through the highest operations of the human 
mind, the work of giving fit names to all the 
objects of nature, was not too learned or too 
scientific to be a cultivator of the earth. This 
same principle of intelligence, which in everything 
else gives success, has its place here as the char- 
acteristic of the most successful operator. When 
you pass by a farm where everything is in its 
place, the fences all right, the fields waving with 
the finest crops, the trees bending beneath the 
weight of the best kind of fruit, the stock such as 
would adorn the park of a king, the house arranged 
for comfort, the barns and stables well planned 
and well kept, you feel instinctively that there is 
something there higher than mere diligence and 



9 

labor, that an intelligent mind, a master of his 
business, has guided the hand of labor and the 
result is success. 

Take your mower and reaper for an illustration. 
It is but a mass of wood and iron. But reflect a 
moment what an amount of intelligence is involved 
in making thesa effective. You must first discover 
the ore and then guide the hand of labor in quar- 
rying it. Then you must build your furnace and 
separate the stone and the iron. Then, by another 
process, you must change the internal structure of 
a part of it and crystallize it into steel. Then you 
must give shape to all its different parts. Then 
you must combine them into a certain relation, so 
as to make your force tell where you wish it. 
Then you must select the right kind of wood and 
fashion and fit it. Then apply your force. But 
if you use horses, you must first train and then 
harness them. You must tan your skins into 
leather, and shape and cut and sew it. And now 
harness your team to it, and let a man, not a clod, 
not an animal, hold the rein. See then how 
intelligence flashes from every part of it as it 
moves along. See through what long travail of 
patient thought, searching, inventing, experiment- 
ing, analyzing, combining, you have made a 



10 

machine — a reaper — an Amencan reaper, that 
shall command the homage of the best minds in 
Christendom, and bear away the palm over all 
similar contrivances in all parts of the world. 

Take still another illustration — what, to some, 
may seem no illustration at all. Take one of those 
fruits — a pear, an apple — so large, rich and luscious. 
It may be that here and there nature alone may 
produce such fruit ; but you cannot trust nature on 
a large scale. To raise such fruit uniformly you 
must put your mind into it ; you must add your 
intelligence to guide the operations of nature ; you 
must select the right position, the best soil, and 
the best fruit ; you must graft and prune and care 
for your trees before you can secure so fine a pro- 
duct. Nature does much ; but nature, directed by 
your intelligence, will do vastly more. Every one 
of these products is a result of nature's work and 
your work combined. And so God meant it 
should be. He meant that in this very way your 
own minds should find exercise and development, 
and you should fill out the measure of an intelligent 
man. He does not bring these things to you and 
say, eat and drink and enjoy yourselves. But he 
says, use your minds, let them guide your hands, and 
then nature will bless you with her richest fruits. 



11 

But, gentlemen, if 3^ou would have a just idea 
of the real dignity of your profession, you must 
view it in connection with the sciences to which 
it is intimately related ; you must survey the field 
of knowledge which it actually covers in order 
to understand the high intelligence which, in 
this age of the world, its most successful prose- 
cution imperatively demands. It is a libel upon 
the age and upon your department of labor to 
suppose that the least education and smallest 
amount of knowledge are sufficient to qualify you 
to master it. Let us look for a moment at the 
science of vegetable chemistry. It is only within 
a few years this science has assumed its present 
large proportions. The name of Liebig will at 
once suggest the immense progress it has made in 
a short period. Now, this science introduces you 
at once into that beautiful system of laws God 
has constituted for the production of food. It 
lays bare the secrets of nature, hidden from the 
foundation of the world. It associates your intel- 
ligence with that of Him who made this world 
for your benefit. It enlarges at once your sphere 
of thought. It stimulates, it exalts your thinking 
powers. It furnishes elements of thought, new 
ideas, which you can combine and follow out in a 



12 

hundred directions. And all this, too, lies legiti- 
mately within your own field of observation and 
labor. It takes the grain of wheat and tells 
you what are its component parts, what it gets 
from the air, the sun and the rain, and Avhat it 
derives from the soil. It analyzes the soil and 
tells you of what it is composed, and instantly 
determines what soils are adapted to the different 
crops you wish to raise. Nay, more than this, 
it tells you not only of what elements your crops 
deprive the soil, but since God has kindly provided 
the materials to repair the waste made by produc- 
tion, it analyzes the vegetable, animal and mineral 
manures, and tells you how to combine, and then 
how to apply them so as to prepare your ground 
for the special harvest you wish to gather. Thus, 
it prepares you for your work. It enables you to 
see as with the eye of God. It gifts you with an 
intelligence as high, as noble, as quickening as that 
of the physician, or the lawyer, or the statesman. 
I know some say, this is all theory; give us 
that which is practical. Very well ; I, too, am 
seeking for that which is practical — that which 
will make you the finest producers in the world ; 
that which will make our American farmers the 
most intelligent and successful in their business of 



13 

any on the globe. And I say that, to be successful, 
you must avail yourselves of all the knowledge 
that appropriately belongs to this business. Now, 
this science of which I speak is both experimental 
and theoretical. The mere experimenter is blind. 
He knows not what he does. He is like an empi- 
rical physician, who kills a dozen patients while 
he succeeds in saving one. He tries this and he 
tries that, with no real knowledge to guide him, 
and, of course, while he occasionally succeeds, in 
most cases he fails. So the mere theorist lives in 
the clouds, he swings in air, he has no anchorage. 
But this science puts these together. It assumes 
that God has built the world according to a wise 
plan ; it finds out that plan by actual experiment ; 
it rises to a comprehension of the laws which 
govern nature in all her generative processes. It 
associates you with God in your work. It tells 
you to know his laws and follow them, and you 
cannot fail of success ; and in doing this it makes 
you most practical, because it has made you intel- 
ligent in those things on which production depends. 
I have spoken of this science more particularly 
because it is intimately connected with these 
great interests. But this is far from being the 
only science which legitimately belongs to the 



14 

agricultur.alist. There is botany, which will teach 
you the form and organic structure of the plants 
and trees you are to raise, and the flowers with 
which your wives and daughters are to adorn your 
dwellings. There is geology and mineralogy and 
metallurgy, teaching you the character and struc- 
ture of th'3 earth, and its minerals and metals — all 
of which belong to you, as one. who should know 
how the world is built, and what precious things 
lie beneath and around you. There is natural 
philosophy, the principles of which are available 
in a hundred directions and for a great variety of 
objects. There is civil engineering; since you 
should know how to run your fences and construct 
your ditches, drains, embankments and roads. 
There is the law which controls the possession 
and alienation of lands and property, and which 
teaches you your rights and duties as a former and 
aa American citizen. There is horticulture and 
rural architecture, and landscape gardening — cul- 
tivating your taste, and giving you the principles 
which will enable you to lay out your walks and 
plant your trees in such forms of beauty as will 
make all hearts glad as they look upon the sur- 
roundings of your home. Nor should it be deemed 
aside from your profession to understand political 



15 

economy, of which you constitute one of the great 
national elements ; or the character of the markets 
and productions of your own and other countries ; 
or the history of improvements in agriculture and 
arts ; and to all this I would add a knowledge of 
mechanism, especially of those mechanical imple- 
ments which belong to your business. There was 
an old law in Wales, that no man should handle a 
plow who could not make one. Now, this was 
making a mechanic of a farmer. But the principle 
is a good one, that he who is to use these tools 
daily should understand their structure and their 
apjDlication, and be able to use them so as to get 
the greatest benefit from them. 

I have thus briefly enumerated a part of those 
sciences and arts which connect themselves directly 
with agriculture. Some of these are essential to 
the greatest success, while others belong to the lite- 
rature of the profession ; but they all combine to 
create the high and broad intelligence which should 
characterize the independent American farmer. 

I know that many of you will say this is a fine 
ideal, but an ideal it is impossible to realize ; that 
if the agriculturalists of our land should rise to 
this degree of intelligence they would be the 
most anomalous and extraordinary race of men in 



16 

the world. Now, I will not say merely that every 
man who means to do something should have a 
high ideal before him, even though he should not 
fully realize it ; that he should have a higher ideal 
still for his own and his neighbors' children, and 
help them to work up to it. The man who aims 
at small results will not pass much beyond them ; 
while the man of high aims may not fully attain 
them all, yet will he rise far beyond the less 
thoughtful and aspiring. 

But, gentlemen, I propose to take high ground 
to-day, and justify this position to your intelli- 
gence. This is an age of progress ; the last fifty 
years constitute the grandest cycle of progression 
known to history. In this advance, this nation of 
ours has stood and now stands in the front, and 
she is to lead the world for generations to come. 
We are an extraordinary people ; planted as no 
other people ever was planted ; developed as no 
other nation ever was developed ; possessed of 
elements of power and progress such as no people 
have possessed since the world was formed. We 
have a Christianity that is living, active, untram- 
meled by the state, and free to work out the 
elevation of the masses ; we have institutions of 
learning, and the means to give every child of this 



17 

republic a good education ; we have free civil 
institutions that train us to self-government and 
stimulate us to self-development; we have a vast, 
a rich territory, where for centuries to come we 
shall have room to increase, and win independence 
and all material comforts. We combine the best 
energies of the most intelligent, the most active 
nations of the world. The Scot and the Saxon, 
the Irishman and the Frenchman, the Hollander 
and the German are here to-day, mingling their 
blood to form one product that shall illustrate all 
their excellencies without their defects, and that 
product is expressed by the proudest patent of 
nobility on earth — the name of an American 
citizen. We have already achieved what the old 
world regards with wonder — we have subdued a 
continent, net- worked it with canals and railroads ; 
dotted it over with thriving towns and beautiful 
villages; built large cities; reared, on a vast scale, 
institutions of learning and religion ; spread our 
commerce over every sea; and raised armies as 
brave, as skillful, as large as those of the greatest 
nations of the past. In science, in art, in lite- 
rature, in jurisprudence, in statesmanship, we 
hold no mean position ; and you, sir,* can testify 
how proudly the genius of America, expressed 

o ^ ♦ Col. Johnson. 



18 

in the practical arts, lifted itself beside the 
emblazoned Lion of England and the Lilies of 
France. And now, with all these advantages in 
actual possession, these triumphs already won, 
will any one say it is unworthy the profoundest 
intelligence and the clearest foresight to hold the 
opinion that we are to be an extraordinary people ; 
that we ought to, and, unless some wonderful catas- 
trophe shall dwarf these vast energies, we shall 
illustrate on a grand scale, more fully than the 
world has ever before seen, the capacity of a whole 
people for the most intelligent self-development 
in all the elements that constitute the highest 
style of manhood ? I say, then, that as a people 
we should have a grand ideal ever before us. And 
while there is to be an advance in all other 
departments of life in this republic, will any one 
dare utter the sentiment that there is one class, 
and that representing interests the most vital to our 
success, which is not to share in this progress, — 
which is not to rise in intelligence and show itself 
worthy of a high place among the most successful 
workers for our national aggrandizement; that 
the ftirmers of America are to lag behind in this 
race, and not put forth the powers of their manhood 
to do and to be all that shall make them worthy 



19 

of these privileges. — fit to stand among the princes 
of the earth ? 

Gentlemen, this is no Utopian idea. The advance 
which has been made in popular education justifies 
me in asserting that many years will not pass 
before we shall see it realized. It is but a few 
centuries since, in old England, the ability to read 
and write would, by the Common Law, be pleaded 
in abatement of punishment for crime ; since the 
privilege of clergy, of the clerks, the clerici^ the 
men who could read and write, saved many a rogue 
from the halter ; since stout-fisted barons and 
lords had to make their marks instead of signing 
their names. What a contrast does this age of 
common schools and academies and colleges pre- 
sent to that ! And what reason can any man assign 
for the limitation of our progress to that which 
we have already attained ? The power to reach 
this advance is in your hands. The process is 
simple. All solid progress begins with the young. 
You bud or graft the young tree when you wish 
to obtain the best fruit. The foundations of rapid 
and permanent advancement can be laid most 
successfully in the minds of the generation that 
is now rising to the stage of action. Give the 
young the culture which will fit them for their 



20 

life work, and in a few years you will put a new 
face on society. 

Nor is this so difficult a work as some may 
imagine. Allow me to make a supposition — to 
suppose that within the next decade every village 
or town should have appended to its central 
school or academy a department in which some 
of the branches most vital to your interests 
should be taught ; that schools specially devoted 
to instruction in agriculture and the mechanical 
arts should be established in our State — not one 
or two, but, if need be, a dozen, so as to bring the 
advantages of this higher instruction home to your 
doors ; that in every college there should be a 
department where men could be most thoroughly 
trained to occupy the post of instructors in these 
schools. Suppose all this to be true, and it needs 
no prophet to anticipate the magnificent result. 
This you have the power to effect. You are the 
strongest, the most independent power in the 
State. When you are ready to combine for the 
accomplishment of this great object, you will find 
men of high intelligence prepared to second your 
efforts and make them successful. When, mindful 
of the importance and dignity of your profession — 
no longer suffering the man whom you elect to 



21 

represent you to neglect your best interests — 
your voice shall be heard in our Legislature, as a 
power not to be resisted, then we shall see a new 
and nobler order of things rising around us. It 
was one of the earliest lessons taught me by 
parental lips, not to speak evil of dignities. And 
though sometimes the impulse to do it is strong, 
I do not intend to yield to it. But when I see a 
legislature largely elected by the farmers and 
mechanics of this State, spending months of tur- 
bulent agitation on the question whether the city 
of New York shall have another street railroad ; 
when I see the rights and interests of a whole 
State held in abeyance until they are shaped to 
suit the narrow views and partisan feelings of the 
advocates of a merely local project ; when I see 
a great measure, involving the interests of the 
farmers and mechanics of this State for genera- 
tions to come, allowed but a few hours' debate ; 
when I see a magnificent gift of a million acres of 
land, designed for your benefit, limited for years 
to come to a small section of the State, and that, 
too, without consulting the views of those most 
deeply interested in the education of the people, 
in opposition to the expressed remonstrance of the 
able and honored men who for so many years have 



. 22 

guided the ciffiiirs of this association and done so 
much for the agricultural interests of the State ; 
then I feel that it is high time you began to exer- 
cise the powers which of right belong to you, and 
that you should have a voice in dictating the 
character of those measures which affect so largely 
the interests of your children. 

I have dwelt longer on this j)oint than I at 
first intended, but not so long as its importance 
demands. The real dignity of your profession is 
determined not by the fact that a few great men 
here and there have belonged to it. It springs 
from its relations to the best interests of society, 
and from the character of the majority of those 
engaged in it. I plead to-day, not for the sons of 
the wealthy, but for those who as farmers and 
mechanics are to live and serve the State by the 
labor of their hands. I contend that they should 
enjoy the highest advantages for mental culture, 
for a training suitable to their business, for the 
acquisition of an intelligence that shall make 
their work most effective, while it enables them 
to stand up in society among the foremost for real 
mental power. The time, the age, the progress 
made in other departments of life press the sub- 
ject upon you ; and, when once your energies shall 



Zd 



be earnestly enlisted, there is nothing desirable in 
this direction which your combined efforts may 
not accomplish. 

Permit me, now, to say a few w^ords on another 
subject which at the present time is awakening 
deep interest among agriculturalists. I refer to 
the question of association. The principle it 
involves is one of vast power. It constitutes all 
the difference between the rill and the river. The 
rill is good in its place ; it does a good work ; it 
fertilizes and blesses the land through which it 
flows ; but, it cannot drive a mill or bear up a 
steamboat. Associate it with a thousand other 
rills and it creates the powder that impels immense 
masses of machinery, or carries on its bosom the 
commerce of a nation. One man in his place can 
do a good work ; but there are some things which, 
isolated, he cannot do ; and there are other things 
which he can do only at a great cost of time and 
labor. But combine his power with that of others, 
and there is scarcely anything of great importance, 
no work however grand, he may not accomplish. 
Popular association belongs almost exclusively to 
a free country. It cannot live and develop itself 
in the arid soil of slavery. Despotism is a class 
association, and oppresses the masses. Whenever 



• 24 

association appears among these it fears it; it 
throttles it, or allows it only a dwarfed and 
sickly existence. The people must not know their 
own power ; isolated they are weak ; associated 
they are mightier than nobles and kings. In our 
country, the principle of popular association is 
fundamental to our success. It is the animating 
principle of our government. It builds churches, 
railroads, canals, banks, asylums. It establishes 
schools and colleges. It forms societies for all pur- 
poses beyond the reach of individuals. It has 
organized and sustained these State and county 
associations for the promotion of agriculture and 
the mechanic arts. These immense gatherings 
of the people; this deep and enthusiastic interest; 
this splendid exhibition of the products of our 
soil and the skill of our artificers, are due to this 
principle. 

Now, the point to which I wish to call your 
attention is this : that the power of association is 
in favor of those who constitute the great mass of 
our farmers — the men of limited means, the men 
who depend mainly upon their own labor and that 
of their sons for the cultivation of their farms. 
In respect to the division of estates, our policy is 
peculiar. In Rome, during the palmiest days 



25 

of the Republic, the amount of land owned by 
individuals was limited. But when she began to 
appropriate the wealth of other countries by her 
conquests and extortions, then these laws were 
abrogated. The result was that a few individuals 
monopolized the whole country. Slavery followed 
successful war, and, instead of the manly farmer, 
like Cincinnatus or Cato, slaves became the 
laborers. Agriculture declined ; the fairest por- 
tions of Italy became depopulated, and the imperial 
city depends for her supply of breadstuffs upon 
the granaries of Egypt and Carthage. In Eng- 
land, the whole kingdom is owned by a few nobles 
and wealthy gentlemen. But, then, while vast 
tracts of country are uncultivated, yet, the absence 
of slavery, the principles of popular liberty and 
the progress of intelligence have saved her from 
the ruin which fell on Rome. Nowhere, probably, 
is there a country where agriculture has been so 
successfully systematized and reduced to a science 
as in England. Whatever wealth and intelligence 
could do, in the constitution of society, has been 
done. In France, the opposite principle prevails. 
Through the peculiar laws adopted since the 
revolution of 1790, estates have been divided and 
subdivided until, by the very minuteness of the 
4 



26 

division, progress in agriculture has been practi- 
cally arrested, 

In our own country, the abolition of laws of 
entail prevents the perpetuation of great estates, 
and the accumulating monoply of land in a few 
families, for any long period. On the other hand, 
the magnificence of our domain — the inheritance 
of the people — prevents the minute subdivision of 
estates, by putting it in the power of any man 
with economy and enterprize to possess himself 
of enough for his personal use. The result is, and 
will be for generations to come, that, while there 
are a few large estates, the mass of the land will 
be held by the people, in quantities sufficient to 
enable each owner, by diligence, economy and 
skill, to maintain his family in honorable inde- 
pendence, give his children a fair education and 
start them successfully in life. 

Now, the effect of association, when rightly 
organized and with respect to legitimate objects, 
is to place the man of limited means largely upon 
an equality with the man of large means. The 
wealth of the one enables him to purchase the 
finest stock and the best instruments for his work. 
He commands the best talent. He can systema- 
tize his work, so as to get the largest return at the 



27 

smallest cost. And, in all this he has greatly the 
advantage. But association originates and puts 
into the hands of the majority a power which 
enables them to compete successfully with their 
richer neighbors. Take for instance the manufac- 
ture of cheese. The rich agriculturalist, with his 
500 or 1,000 acres, and his 100 or 200 cows, by a 
proper system, can make an article which will 
bear a better price in market, and at a less cost to 
himself, than his neighbor who owns only a dozen 
cows. But when, by combining together, you 
introduce the same system, you attain precisely 
the same results. Your labor goes farther and 
gives you a richer reward. 

This principle is available in various directions. 
I know of no reason why it may not apply to the 
purchase and use of the best agricultural imple- 
ments, the best mowers and reapers, and the best 
threshing machines. In Wales, three centuries 
ago, a dozen men associated to purchase and use a 
single plow. In our frontier settlements, where 
labor is scarce and the work to be done great, it 
has been the custom for a whole neighborhood to 
assist each other in clearing the land and gather- 
ing in the harvest. We are far beyond the neces- 
sity of combination for those objects. But the 



28 

advance of agricultural science has produced other 
necessities, which press heavily upon the small 
farmer in his competition with those of large 
means, and which he can only meet by association 
with others. In the same way a company of 
individuals can import the finest stock in the 
world ; and thus, in a short time, the whole land 
may enjoy the benefits of the best breeds of cattle 
and horses. Hitherto, this has been done by ovCr 
wealthy and enterprising agriculturalists ; but 
there is no reason why every farmer may not pos- 
sess all the material advantages he needs to give 
him success. The power is in your hands ; you 
have only to apply this principle among your- 
selves, with your characteristic energy and wis- 
dom, and the next twenty years will witness an 
advance in your profession which otherwise a 
century would not secure. 

There is still one topic to which, in justice to 
the great interests here represented, I wish to 
allude before I close. We are in the midst of 
war — a civil war — a war the most gigantic in its 
dimensions and issues known to history; a war 
remarkable for the immense armies engaged in it, 
the number of battles it has fought, and the vast 
extent of country over which it spreads ; more re- 



29 

markable as a contest for the integrity of the Union, 
for the supremacy of the Constitution ; a war, 
not on the part of the majority to enslave, but to 
maintain freedom and the supremacy of the ballot- 
box over the bayonet, and to perpetuate institu- 
tions essential to the full development of a true 
manhood. Yet, while this conflict is in progress, 
our villages, our towns and cities, exhibit an 
tmexampled degree of prosperity; our industrial 
pursuits, with the exception of a single branch 
dependent on the cotton of the South, have 
received no sensible check. With the character- 
istic energy and power of adaptation of our people, 
we have rapidly adjusted our pursuits to our 
altered circumstances. We live, we grow, we 
engage in new enterprises, as men instinct with 
the vitality which true freedom inspires. And, 
while this is true of most branches of industry, it 
is specially true of that great interest which 
underlies all the rest — the interest which creates 
the material out of which all our wealth proceeds — 
the great agricultural interest. Among no class 
has there existed a more intense loyalty, a more 
steady patriotism, than among the farmers of this 
land. No class, in proportion to its numbers, has 
sent a larger representation in the field. Yet, 



30 

with all this diminution of their operative force, 
not an acre less of land has been sown; the crops 
have been harvested; the work of production to 
supply our soldiers in the field, and our citizens 
at home, has gone on with even increased vigor. 
In this hour of trial the farmer has exhibited rare 
energy ; he has sometimes sent forth into the field 
of labor his patriotic daughters, to supply the place 
of sons gone to the field of war ; he has called to 
his aid, more than ever before, the unrivaled pro- 
ductions of our mechanics to save labor. All over 
the land, he is seen rising up with indomitable 
energy to meet the exigencies of the great occasion. 
Had this branch of industry been stricken down, 
commerce would have languished; credit would 
have been shaken ; our armies would have been 
compelled to retire from the contest ; the South, 
supplied by the forced labor of her slaves, would 
have triumphed. But, instead of that, the ener- 
gies of freemen, favored by a kind Providence, 
have filled the land with the rich products of the 
soil. Where, in all history, can you find another 
nation that, in the midst of a gigantic civil war, 
not only maintained all her agricultural interests, 
but sent forth to other nations an immense sur- 
plus; thus maintaining our national credit and 



ol 

sustaining our finances, while, at the same time, 
mindful of the dictates of humanity and religion, 
we freely contributed shipload after shipload of 
bread to feed the starving operatives of a govern- 
ment that, instead of sympathizing with us in our 
trials, has furnished the materials for a piratical 
war upon our commerce, and put into the hands of 
our enemies the most effective Aveapons to sweep 
that commerce from the ocean. 

We recognize, gratefully, that benign Providence 
which, for the last three years, has made the earth 
so productive, and brought the nations of Europe to 
our doors for the food their own soil failed to 
supply. But it is fit and right that we should 
recognize and appreciate the energy and self-sac- 
rifice of those who planted and reaped for us these 
rich harvests. The American farmer has given 
to the world the most illustrious examples of true 
patriotism. When the news of the battles of 
Lexington and Concord reached Gen. Putnam, he 
was plowing his own acres. Leaving his plow in 
the furrow, mounting his horse and bidding his 
family a hasty adieu, he hastened to draw his 
sword on Bunker Hill. He was the type of the 
patriotism of the farmers of the revolution. Their 
sons, inheriting their principles and their spirit. 



32 

have proved themselves worthy of so iUustrious a 
parentage. Self-reliant, independent, the monarchs 
of their own domains, they are ready to use the 
plow or the sword, in resisting the assaults of des- 
pots from abroad or traitors at home, or in building 
up a nation the freest and grandest in the world. 
The State and the nation owe to them, far more 
than to any other class, their material and intel- 
lectual greatness. The children of the farmer, 
instinct with original enterprise, are found in all 
positions of power and influence. They supply 
the waste of life 'and counteract the inherent 
tendency to degeneracy in the large towns and 
cities. Our ablest mechanics, lawyers, physicians, 
divines ; our most illustrious statesmen ; our most 
scientific teachers ; our merchants who have spread 
our commerce round the world ; our pioneers whose 
hands have leveled the grand old forests and made 
the wilderness blossom ; our ablest generals — the 
thunderbolts of war — in the great majority of 
cases, were not reared in the luxury and excitement 
of cities. They are the children of the soil ; they 
breathed the pure air of heaven in their childhood ; 
their youth was nurtured and grew strong for the 
work of life amidst the storms and sunshine and 
the invigorating labors of the country. With such 



a country, possessed by intelligent, religious, sturdy 
freemen, with such institutions of religion and 
science and government, who can doubt that a 
glorious future is before us ? With a country, so 
varied in climate, so rich in mineral treasures, so 
productive in its soil ; with its valleys and hills 
and mountains, its forests and prairies, its lakes 
and rivers ; its shores, washed by two oceans ; 
Avhere men of every temperament may develop 
their energies, and where all things stimulate them 
to progress ; dotted over with colleges and schools 
and churches, and filled with all the elements of 
social progress, where in this world, if not here, 
should man assert his true nobility and rise to the 
loftiest height of greatness, and send forth his 
influence to civilize, evangelize and exalt the 
world ? 

I anticipate the future. I see this black cloud 
of war uplift and roll away, and the sun shine 
down upon a land impressed with the foot of 
neither slave nor traitor. I see this young giant, 
conscious of his strength, move forward in the 
work of civilization and humanity with irresis- 
tible power. And, as he advances, I see the hills 
and valleys of the North, the prairies of the Great 
Valley, the savannahs of the South, the slopes 



:}4 

washed by the western Main, filled with an intel- 
ligent, a religious, a rejoicing people — one in 
language, one in sympathy, one in government — 
the inheritors and possessors of the same institu- 
tions, the noblest development of humanit}^ 



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